Kingdom Hearts: The Girl Who Stole the Star

by Lacan Shinn

Sequel to KH: SEOD. Sora is restored from The Final World to find that much has changed since he vanished. Sora's death has devastated Kairi and Riku; Roxas, Xion, Anna, and Elsa are faced with nightmare destinies; and the mysterious Master of the Foretellers, adumbrated by shade, is on the verge of completing his millennia long plan. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

52. Sundering Hearth of Nightmares

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CHAPTER 51:

SUNDERING HEARTH OF NIGHTMARES

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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Maybe Tomorrow ~ Ending Medley,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two; and after it 'Battle Versus Yuriev,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks; and after it 'FATES ~ God's Destiny,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after it, 'The Harsh Truth,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc One; and after it, 'June Mermaid,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after it 'Awakening,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after it 'The Wounded Shall Advance Into the Light,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc One; and afterwards 'Moonlit Night Theme,' from the SUIKODEN II Original Soundtrack, Volume Two, Disc One. The third piece, and the eighth piece, can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the rest of the pieces can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section. Scrolling down any lower than 'The Harsh Truth (Piano Version)' in the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks section will reveal two of the largest spoilers in the XENOSAGA trilogy.

---

Anna practically couldn't take in she'd chosen to push everything she could still feel and think outside the crystalline sharp clarity of her determination to the side.

She practically couldn't be aware she'd chosen to begin sprinting forward to Sora before she'd decided to move.

She practically couldn't perceive anything other than Sora's motionless body lying unmoving on his front, his gaze turned away from her.

As the ice and encroaching frigid cold had all but vanished to the edges of her perception when she'd staggered towards Elsa, and then it all had disappeared from any beholding when she'd heard Sora call her name, all Anna was aware of was that Sora had just almost certainly been broken as Elsa had been broken, those ineradicably inscribed suspended instants that hour in the ice palace.

And that this time, Anna knew what love was.

And what reality was.

Her love for Sora, as one of her dearest and closest friends to her heart, was going to do for him what she hadn't done for Elsa then.

The one person who had believed in her, and who had believed she could bring her sister home to its warm hearth, and back kept the closest to the most profound foundations of her being and heart, was not going to follow in Elsa's footsteps.

Anna was not going to let this happen this time.

Roxas' voice sounded, unexpectedly without any pain from where he should have been all but immobile, with an empty broken resigned resolved determination.

"If even you two are going to believe I'm doing something foolish, and stop me; if this is the sole recourse I have remaining to keep Xion and Axel and Mare and you safe from another revenge crazed beast who hates all darkness; if all of the people I believed to be my best friends are going to betray me and raise a weapon or energy against me; Xemnas' perfect Nobody is gone, and I'll be the abomination DiZ believes I am."

Elsa's horror flooded intake of breath, and the all too familiar recognition of the sentiments in those words, brought Anna to a halt as Roxas was just beginning to speak.

She twisted to bring the frozen Roxas into her vision.

He was no longer an ice statue, though.

He was a featureless sculpture of shades of whirling storms of shades of gray inside the flickering outline of a human shape without even eyes, one that appeared to have stepped slightly backwards from all existence while it bent inwards towards him from all directions to then bleach into a blot of preserved motionless whites and light grays the color of ash, Oathkeeper and Oblivion grasped in indefinable appendages and aimed directly at Christopher.

"Formchange, Cantata Iustitia, Fae in Vacuus."

Christopher smiled with calm, triumphant but relieved after irritation satisfaction, and Anna knew that; whatever setbacks Maleficent had encountered and whatever other opportunities she'd succeeded or failed to exploit, that this, without Christopher having been aware Maleficent had known who had killed his family the entire time, was what she'd sought to accomplish from the very first second she'd spoken to Roxas in an Arendelle in the presence of an Elsa who was now mending and sustaining it rather than laying waste to it and bringing it wounds, who he'd just sworn an oath to serve with his fullest devoted heart as her knight.

The next second, Vanitas scowled with a dark amalgamation of rage and irritation, and the same oblate corona of pitch jet she briefly recalled seeing walling Sora off from her when she'd become aware she was no longer cold and Elsa's arms were around her rushed out from his body and expanded upwards and outwards, but mostly in the directions of Roxas and Christopher, precisely enough Anna knew it wouldn't reach anyone else.

Seconds after it began emitting, Elsa slid between Roxas, and Sora and her, and waves of ice were already rippling out from hands aimed palm downwards at the marble, and an ascending slope of snow was picking Anna up and carrying her back to land beside Sora.

---

Riku once more didn't suppress a flicker of terror for Kairi as Gula didn't call upon a Keyblade of his own, but he reached into his robes and pulled out a single golden nunchaku and broke it into a double defensive position.

After what Kairi's Mom had just done to her, he'd even lost any justification to suppress what feelings he hadn't removed from himself in the months since Riku had let his hate and terror for losing the very person who had taught him how to rise above the hate and terror that had almost brought Sora to his death or darkness at Riku's hands bring both Sora and Kairi to the deaths he'd been a mad enough spoiled infant to honestly believe he'd learned to no longer let rule him.

Skuld's Heartless twisted her body to her left and whirled vertically until her ship raft was above her and she was dangling off its bottom, and then slammed the front of raft portion into the nunchaku while rising up to slice with both sais in a narrow x at Gula's abdomen.

The left and right section of the nunchaku broke, and bent to intercept the raft's Face as an oval pulse of black lightning burst out of it, while the center section lowered to block Skuld's Heartless' sais.

The two higher fragments of the nunchaku held the lightning away, but a small familiar purple sphere appeared in front of Skuld's Heartless at a precise enough location to bend the gravity and add its alteration to her inertia, speeding up her slash so it cut into Gula's robes.

Gula, however, just braced himself and brought the center part of his nunchaku down to collide it with the underside of Skuld's Heartless' chin, ramming her into the stones below crown first at an odd enough angle to strain her neck.

She struck the stones and ground and slumped at an askew angle, her raft falling over her.

Yozora's Heartless clenched his teeth tightly, clearly straining to retain mastery of his body.

It hadn't even been a contest when Xehanort's Heartless had taken his.

And Terra had at least been able to retain a small amount of influence over his body.

But that was at last about to end.

Once Kairi shattered his heart, whatever process Riku went through that enabled him to become a full fledged Dream Eater should make it even easier to find a way to irreversibly discover a way to become a Heartless and Nobody as his one self with all his Unversed inseparable from his Nobody portion, and lock himself in a combined form as both beyond any chance of reversion.

If Kairi didn't set his heart free from his body, Riku would just continue doing what he should have begun as soon as Sora had vanished past unwinding himself, find a way while seeking reasons to call corridor of darkness after corridor of darkness until his heart almost couldn't take the strain any longer, and then finish himself off once he knew a means to do so.

Riku knew better than most there was a catch.

But if he stopped holding the darkness back at all, and accepted all of it while looking past it at the light, and at Namine, and his promise to his replica to take care of her as he hadn't been able to Sora and Kairi, he needed to believe he could find a way.

"But since when does trusting in Sora's ability to pull through mean being okay with him crying?

"I thought that the idea was to keep him from shedding tears in the first place.

"You don't believe in Sora.

"You're just worried about having faith in yourself.

"You haven't learned anything from giving into the darkness.

"You just want Sora to tell you what to do with his example, and follow behind him as the shadow that he casts and the greatest Nobody of all, no matter how much pain you let Sora go through in the process; so, just like before, you can continue to trust yourself over your best friend.

"I was wrong about what I said to you when Yen Sid told us about Aqua.

"I don't still feel that way."

Skuld's Heartless shifted her raft familiar into a similarly sized crimson World of Traverse with her standing atop the front top of its lower protrusion, and it swung up to catapult familiar crimson globules with sigils on them out of its confines over the center bar of the nunchaku and between the two side segments.

She must have intended to detonate them prematurely if Gula snapped the nunchaku closed, because he held it open.

So the top of the giant vertical familiar swung down, slamming into the top of the central segment and forcing it down.

Then the air around it shimmered, seguing back into the raft size World of Chaos.

Even before it had solidified, Skuld's Heartless was sprinting up it to swing both sais into the two side fragments of the nunchaku and flip upwards to kick up with both her feet at Gula's chin.

A sharp edged, primarily light yellow Keyblade appeared hovering in the air between Gula's chin and the kick, blocking it and then shifting to throw Skuld's Heartless back at an askew angle.

She nevertheless somersaulted backwards while her World of Chaos raft flew back for her to land on in a stable position.

But who else could Riku believe in?

Believing in purely himself, and his promise to Terra to become stronger, had been blind faith in the darkness.

Being loyal to his heart, as Namine had taught him, had at least enabled him to stand on his own feet while fighting for a cause of his own that wasn't the black and white choice between light and darkness Yozora believed in and Ansem the Wise once had.

So what if it may not be the cause of his own Hercules had taught Sora to find, and it may be the cause someone else told him to fight for?

For Riku, he'd been genuinely fated to become a good little loyal soldier from the very first instant Terra had bequeathed the Keyblade to him.

In this, there wasn't even a matter of choices.

And it was Namine who had taught him to believe in accepting the darkness.

Riku couldn't give up on that.

Thanks to Sora, and Ven, Aqua had found a way, in the most enduring darkness.

Riku just hadn't accepted enough of the darkness yet.

How Kairi had at last admitted that she'd never forgiven him, as Sora had, and how, unlike Sora, she'd hated him ceaselessly since he'd given into the darkness, was nothing more than the largest proof of all he needed to continue on this trail even though he didn't know where it led, because there was always a way back to Sora and Kairi even if he couldn't see it.

Additionally, Aqua had held onto the light in very large part because she'd sacrificed herself for him.

That was what had enabled her to regain confidence in herself, and had kept her from giving up.

For her sake, Riku needed to prove that there was nothing to be afraid of from not just accepting the darkness, but becoming one with it.

A lot more so when that might be the only way remaining to keep her from letting the hate and rage she was resigned to from ruling her.

Kairi's Mom wasn't moving to intervene in the duel, although she was clearly keeping a wary eye on Yozora's Heartless inside the hood turned in his direction.

Kairi was still standing where she had been, while Mickey was near Riku with his eyes on both of them worriedly.

"Heartless of your own choice or not, have you at least forgotten who you're dealing with?" Gula questioned Skuld's Heartless amusedly.

"If you think anyone other than Master Yozora and Luxu can run circles around me, you're even more of a poser than Xehanort's Heartless."

"Separating into a Heartless and Nobody was the way I got most of my memories back," Skuld's Heartless spoke back with a composed, but endlessly stabbing hate of herself more than Gula that Riku was surprised to find descended so deep he was more uncomfortable than sympathetic to hear it.

"So I remember, all right.

"I remember how you're so treacherous and deceptive and self serving and underhanded you use anyone and everyone, even lifelong close friends like Ava."

Kairi didn't shift, if Ava had reacted.

"For all of Xehanort's and Xemnas' lies, even they had the decency to keep a distance from the people he used, and not pretend to honestly care about them and then use that to attempt to string them along.

"Hans did that with Anna, but he barely knew her, and he did genuinely identify with her as a friend and care about her a little until the Arendelle courtier told him Arendelle had no one but him if Anna died; then once he gave into the darkness the rest of the way he stopped lying to her very soon after he saw her another time.

"It takes a very special kind of apathy and selfishness to be willing to use people you act the loving friend to for many years of your life as puppet weapons and toy tools.

"You're barely any better than Master Yozora and Luxu, if any better at all.

"You might actually be a lot worse.

"They just gave the orders, even though it was in the same ways you do it.

"You're the soldier who carried them out, and who first began to seek Kingdom Hearts by hoarding Lux, convincing the others to follow in your footsteps; so you could bring Master Yozora back and he could tell you what to do next as the slavish faithless back sneak you are.

"You're the real instigator of the Keyblade War, while they were just the officers who told you to use their methods to swing the real first sword and fire the real first shot.

"And since you're the greatest danger to Master Ava, and thus Ephemer and Empyreal and the rest of the Dandelions, of any of the Foretellers we once trusted and believed in; that above all is why my revenge on you is going to be the means by which I give far enough into the darkness to take Empyreal's place in hate and sadness."

Yozora's Heartless clenched his teeth tightly once more.

Skuld's Heartless snarled with a nearly feral hate and her raft ripped forward through the air, carrying her back at Gula again.

Riku didn't know whether to hope, or fear, Empyreal was aware enough to hear all of this word for word, or at least enough to learn enough of the truth.

This time, Gula brought his Keyblade up to his right side, positioning it as Sora did one of his Keyblades in Master Form, and ran to meet her with his nunchaku back in one piece in his left clasp.

Skuld's Heartless waited until he was right in front of her and beginning to slice with both weapons, and then she morphed her raft back into the tall familiar, leaving her right in front of Gula as his blows continued far enough to make it clear they weren't feints while he was overextended and thrusting in with both sais.

Moving so deftly Riku almost couldn't process it, Gula shifted his grip on the nunchaku, and it broke into three pieces once more.

He then shot his left arm forward, crashing the lower piece into Skuld's Heartless' stomach and the higher one into her neck before her stabs could connect.

As she staggered back, Gula's Keyblade then connected with her left eye, and Skuld's Heartless fell back against her familiar with one hand clapped against it and blood trickling down between her fingers, the sai that had been in that hand on the ground beside her.

Yozora's Heartless took an unsteady step back, his face twisted in a slight grimace.

"That's true as you tell it," Gula responded.

Riku felt a bit of surprise pass through him that Gula sounded a small amount genuinely guilty.

"But Master Yozora did all that to guide me to my proper place, even though his approval of me was as faked as his disapproval of Aced.

"Because, whether you like it or not, Ven did set everything into motion, and swing the first sword.

"This is a World where the greatest death and hurt are cast into reality by connections, a World that has no hope unless it ceases to exist in its current composition.

"Master Yozora needed to teach me that.

"All I did was use Ava to do what was best for her, and that's all I'm doing for all of the Foretellers and Keyblade wielders and everyone else now."

Kairi staggered back violently as though she'd been struck.

Riku's stomach churned violently.

"What's going on?" Mickey asked with deep concern.

"It was Kairi who opened the door in Radiant Garden, Sora's Heartless is the core of the Note Blade, I'm supposed to become a disembodied Dream Eater component of it who needs a Keyblade wielder to tie to to dwell in the realm of light at Kairi's hands through her shattering my heart, and Kairi's Mom is our latest coated foe who told us the first two things," Riku replied, barely registering the pain ripping through him at the words.

Mickey's mouth dropped open, and he jolted so violently he almost leapt into the air.

Kairi's eyes flew wide.

Then she sprinted between the two of them, and while she didn't face either or move Destiny's Embrace in any of their directions, the gaze she gave Mickey was too wary.

Riku's stomach churned with sick violence for a second time.

Everything that was his being screamed for him to open his mouth and take back what he'd said to Kairi, because he was just encouraging her to give into the darkness and do something he didn't need what Maleficent had done with Xion to remind him must have a horrific catch they didn't know about.

However, after what Kairi's Mom had revealed she'd done, Riku knew he'd hurt her far more if he wasn't willing to lose his heart to sleep.

And this was what true soldiers did, correct?

They gave limbs and life, death and sleep, to protect the people close to them, and the people elsewhere.

Why was what Mickey had said Data-Sora had learned about how being a hero meant being the one who was still alive passing through his mind?

And why was his stomach twisting at the reminder the real Sora had appeared uncertain when reading that part of Mickey's letter?

"Don't get any bright ideas about taking the choice away from me by doing it yourself, if all else comes to worst," Kairi said in a neutral tone.

Riku's stomach bent even more at the suppressed edge of warning beneath her voice he extremely highly doubted Mickey knew her well enough to tell was there.

I'm not Gula.

I'm not Luxu.

I'm not Yozora.

This really is for the best.

"This is also why I could care less what the specifics of your strategy is," Gula continued, the guilt now gone from his voice and his tone sure and steady.

"I'm a master of subterfuge in Master of Master Yozora's very own image now, so skilled and experienced I'm not even sure Luxu could outwit me now if I really put my thought to it.

"Once I've pieced together enough of your strategy, I'll see the rest of it coming a mile away."

Unless Skuld's Heartless was also exploiting the tendency of the sharp and experienced to not see the obvious coming that Goofy was seeking to exploit.

For the first time, Riku struggled to breathe more than his injuries were keeping him from doing.

If Skuld's Heartless was seeking to exploit that weakness, then the Foretellers might figure out Goofy's strategy due to having fallen into a similar snare at the hands of someone else.

Out of nowhere, a familiar warmth throbbed through Riku's heart.

Then a much less familiar tall pearl structure extending into the edges of a door to her sides and the ceiling of one manifested around Kairi, while Riku saw the same white appear around him.

New tears appeared in Kairi's eyes.

Mickey started violently.

"Sora," Kairi breathed, the barest string of desperation without any hope or begging at all the sole emotion in her voice.

Yozora's Heartless was then in motion, disappearing into the air to reappear at Gula's side with his neon orange sword swinging at the Foreteller at a slightly less rapid pace than Empyreal's had moved.

Gula brought his Keyblade around to block, but Yozora's Heartless followed up his first slash with a dexterous sequence of slices and cuts that Riku's own trained eye could tell were much more precise and fluid than Empyreal's even though they were a small amount slower.

Then Skuld's Heartless pushed herself back into a standing position, her sai disappearing and reforming in her hand even though her left eye was clenched closed, her familiar dispersed and she fell to the cobblestones, and she launched into a series of agile jabs and cleaves while moving at the arrowgun of the other Heartless with the practiced ease of someone that told Riku she must have fought with Empyreal at least enough to become as good of a team with him Donald and Goofy had become with Sora.

"Get out of here!" she screamed to them both.

"And don't worry about me being outnumbered! Yozora's Heartless is fighting to discover who he is, but he values his present as much of his forgotten past! I'm not in any da–"

The two Doors to Light vanished.

Kairi jolted violently, and she paled.

Mickey started violently.

True terrified worry rushed through Riku at what this could mean.

Skuld's Heartless staggered slightly, and her two sais slid a little to the right out of a twin thrust.

Gula reacted without delay, stepping back once and then swinging the segment of his nunchaku that was the closest to Yozora's Heartless' blade as it curved at him against the outside of its arc, speeding it up in Skuld's Heartless' direction.

Yozora's Heartless staggered himself, Empyreal clearly reacting.

The next second, Gula began to shift into what Riku could tell was going to be an Ars Arcanum at Yozora's Heartless.

The soothing lights of a Curaga sprayed over Skuld's Heartless.

Gula lowered his Keyblade.

Riku suppressed the urge to clench his teeth, not knowing whether Empyreal's reassertion of his self in his own body was a good development, or a bad one.

"Master Gula, what is the current situation?" Empyreal queried, his words totally devoid of all feeling.

"Where is the Heartless that turned Skuld into one?

"And who is it who manipulated Master Ava?

"Lastly, how do you want Skuld's Heartless subdued?"

Too many feelings to understand passed over Skuld's Heartless' face.

Kairi didn't react at all.

Mickey shifted Kingdom Key White into a guard position, as aware as Riku that they had now lost the advantage of numbers.

Now Riku clenched his teeth.

Empyreal hadn't heard close to enough.

"I'll answer the second and third question later," Gula answered, his tone now that of a sympathetic and friendly teacher and friend.

"For now, all you need to know is that we're finally ready to fulfill the promise your Nightmare Chirithy made you when he gave you your bangle from Luxu, of giving you the power you need to protect the people and places you hold near, and give you your Mark of Mastery Exam."

Kairi's face shifted.

Something in what Gula had just said must have affected Ava with unusual potency.

Mickey's face shifted less drastically.

Skuld's Heartless clenched the hilts of her sais so tightly the nails of all of her fingers brought blood out.

The corners of Empyreal's lips curled up very slightly, in the ghost of a broken smile of anticipation.

"I think it's because you've finally found inside you that special strength to protect what matters."

That wasn't important now.

And after what Kairi had revealed in Monstro, Riku knew he was one of the very last people who had the farthest away chance of bringing someone like Empyreal out of the darkness.

Maybe Terra could do it.

All Riku was capable of was doing things that caused people to hate him.

Beyond immeasurably more than anyone, Riku could not light the way out of the darkness for someone who saw it as the same means of protecting others as Riku and Terra had.

"As soon as Kairi is bequeathed the Note Blade, you'll get the blade that is your own birthright after so much time studying and mastering the Kye-Blade in the hearts of the Xehanorts, and we can begin combining it with Domain of Tales into your Chord Blade."

Kairi started.

Mickey's face altered in uncertainty.

Skuld's Heartless went ramrod stiff with slackly drawn shocked and horrified terror and hate.

Riku's stomach churned, not just at this new lie or revelation, but at the reminiscence of what Kingdom Hearts genuinely was, and how Sora would very likely take it when he found out.

"The first test in your Mark of Mastery Exam is to kill Riku if Kairi doesn't shatter his heart in the exact way we want her to."

---

Xion barely had time to register Mare was moving once more before she was leaping high up, and then careening through the air at the rim of the volcano's crater at the same speed Ventus' Armored Nightmare had rocketed when it had turned itself into the living missile Riku had appeared to have begun to grasp the concept of sacrificing himself for others by living for them to defeat.

Why hadn't Xion learned that herself then?

Maybe then she wouldn't have needed Axel and Roxas' voice through Sora to give her her memories back.

Ira was in the air before them, leaping up out of a spring, Norn in a two handed grasp poised to chop down on Mare.

Yggdrasil reached Ira first, somersaulting forwards and sideways in a rising windmill of whipping amethyst wings in a clockwise direction that caught the bottom of Ira's lance at a precise enough point to send him falling backwards, uncoordinated.

Xion heard the clang of Keyblade on Keyblade, and she looked down to see that Aqua had intercepted a jumping strike from Invi with the same Formchanged Keyblade she'd wielded in Thebes with a block from above as he descended from a similar leap.

"Whatever trickery you've hidden in that crater, there's nowhere to run," Invi yelled after them as she retreated from sight, her voice otherwise as calm and unconcerned as usual, while, although it was hard to tell from this receding distance, she wasn't making what looked like more than a small effort to push back against Ephemer's block.

"I'm not running when Riku is in danger," Aqua snarled back with a lack of restraint that was off in an essential way Xion knew she should be able to recognize and place, but she couldn't think of.

Within seconds, a flowing Magnega construct was bringing Aqua higher into the air, courtesy of Donald, and she brought Rainfell into a low sweeping cut as Goofy twirled through the air at Invi from her right.

Invi pulled back to evade both, but Aqua altered her trajectory precisely enough to land on Goofy's shield as he passed beneath her and hurl a Strike Raid discus at Invi, and it smashed into her across both eyes and sent her staggering back a little.

She regained a stable stance in midair much faster than she'd recovered in Olympus, though.

Ira backflipped into a stable posture in midair and then rocketed backwards with them, but Strelitzia must have practiced piloting Gigases with a lot of other craft, because she kept pace between them.

Ira's voice thundered so loudly Xion knew he was still amplifying it with magic for them all to hear.

"It won't come to that," Ira told them.

"If you surrender, Strelitzia, and turn the Keychains of the in between, memory, and data over to us, we'll even let the rest of you retrieve whatever snare you've buried here."

Before anyone could say anything back, a familiar silvery all washing pain she'd solely felt once before, when she'd woken up after the second time she'd betrayed Axel and attacked him to discover Xemnas had just taken from her whatever was left she could call her self, tore through her head.

Then there wasn't even the most feathery barest brush of the ideas of giving up or striving on.

Of disbelief or desperate trust.

Because Xion understood.

Everything that wasn't and was a potential or reality cleared at her she shouldn't pay and sentiment or mind to this, that she should let her determination boost her or new despair drown her.

But none of that could matter at all now, because she'd truly done it.

She hadn't given up.

And so she'd done it.

She had her chance.

Axel.

Mare.

Tidus.

Roxas.

I love you all so much.

Thank you all so much.

Now I pay my debts.

Xion opened her heart to sensations and perceptions she'd known but once before, and let the memories and feelings she could now imbibe that the Note Blade they were now almost directly below was still siphoning up from the epitaphs of Keyblades at locations literally further away than the stars submerge her.

Strelitzia, the Keychain of Light, dwelling in shadow.

Empyreal, the Keychain of Darkness, imprisoning the brightest warmth.

Riku, the Keychain In Between, who accepted both light and darkness.

Mare, the Keychain of Memory, brought into being and sustained by it.

Namine, the Keychain of Data, who gave memories substance with crayons and coding.

Ephemer, the Keychain of Dreams, whose hope in reality's potentialities had twice been a candle renewing history.

As a heart with connections to all six of these facets of the crystalline prism that comprised all reality, yet ones that kept her apart from it, Luxu had given Xemnas the idea of developing the memory repositories that had fed her power to test whether she would be able to fulfill the role whose lines Xion had at long last translated into language.

It was a Mark of Mastery Exam that Xion had graduated at the top of her class.

All Xion needed to do was harness the Keyblade of Hearts to wind her unique connections around whatever was on the bridge above that the late geyser of black had left behind, and even if neither Sora or Roxas cast the Note Blade, once they fulfilled the rest of the conditions for forging it, as long as Xion fulfilled her own role, the Note Blade would reside on a stable plateau simultaneously far enough apart and balanced with all the other facets of the prism it would be cast.

But with all the knowledge in those currents she herself could brush with the Keyblade of Hearts, destroying the Gazing Eye would be child's play.

Something was clawing at her mind, reminding her there was something it was in uncountable ways even more essential she be careful not to do if she attempted to wield a second sword as double edged as the Keyblade of Hearts.

But it was as though it was the farthest away thing of all, drifting past any types of space and time, and giddiness so shrieking and howling it was almost gibbering wouldn't let her remember what it was.

What Tidus had just revealed told Xion what she needed to do, though.

Don't stop to think about anything now.

Don't second guess at all.

If it's important enough, you'll remember it.

You more than most won't forget things that are that important if it turns out to matter.

What Xion needed to worry about was what the conditions were that were the precise method to forge the Note Blade.

The Keyblade of Hearts was forged by connecting hearts, while the Kye-Blade could be forged either by connecting them or by compelling them to reject each other.

The Note Blade must originate from one of those means, or both.

Most likely both, as it was meant to harness all of the power of Kingdom Hearts.

Which hearts, if that was the case, needed to connect to each other, or one another?

And which hearts needed to reject each other, or one another?

"Those are the lamest settlement terms I've heard in my life," Strelitzia retorted.

Ira merely leapt upwards over her to aim one of Norn's tips down at Mare and descend with the light blue flames of the end of a Dark Aura encasing him.

"Gotcha'," Ephemer gave a relieved but playful smirk.

Xion was for some mysterious reason aware she was sighing slightly in relief.

This must be a potential tactic Ephemer and Strelitzia had rehearsed.

Ephemer's Kingdom Key Starlight then Formchanged into the same kind of whip Young Xehanort had demonstrated for her during her brief refresher course in combat before she'd deployed.

It lashed out, aimed not for Ira's body as he must be anticipating, but for the tip of Norn.

It roped itself smoothly around that tip and yanked Ira downwards and backwards much quicker than Xion could remember seeing any Keyblade wielder move his, her, or its weapon before in her life.

Right into Strelitzia's amethyst wings as they arced behind her to stab at Ira from all directions with similar speed.

To his credit, Ira didn't emit a single sound as the amount of wrath Xion had hoped for punctured through the robes of the Foreteller Xion knew to be the active second in command under Luxu and into his flesh and sinew, and his veins and bones beneath.

Strelitzia wasn't done, though.

As the anguish in Xion's head burgeoned acutely and they crested the horizon of the volcano, she registered that the components of the Imagegigas from which Strelitzia's wings extended had detached as they'd caught Ira, and Yggdrasil itself was already spinning to aim both palms at Ira.

Strelitzia pronounced two words from inside the Imagegigas' cockpit.

"Kishin Sword."

Then Yggdrasil roared forward and ripped those palms in a relentlessly swift sequence of martial arts thrusts and palm strikes and knife hands into Ira's mask, wave after wave of incandescent light blue surging down the arms as though they were rushing lines of bubbles into each hand that impacted Ira with each move in the combination strike and detonating into starbursts of crimson.

Then Mare dropped toward the volcano floor far below.

"We're looking for a small Gummi ship in the shape of a giant Wayfinder," Ephemer told them, his voice low and quick.

"This Gummi ship, that I named Illumina, should enable us to pilot through a special Lane Between Strelitzia and I built it to tunnel in the astral fabric of reality itself directly to a terrace behind the clock on the clocktower above us.

"That's where the Gazing Eye is, safely behind a lock that will be easier to explain for all of you when you see it."

"Then I'll tell Mare what she wants to know, right now," Xion was certain from the desperate uncertainty in the chasm strewn inflections, now filled with inflections of the unmeasurable hate of herself and guilt that Xion was familiar with, yet in a yawning wasteland of fissures and exhausted hopeless broken hope that Xion had never heard before, that the girl's voice was Alicia's, and not Silmeria's.

Axel pressed his lips together very tightly, but with resigned understanding.

Mare didn't shift any of her body enough to display a face, or at least one Xion could see, but she still jolted violently.

Xion was aware of everything another time, and now there was real fright gripping all of her inside her and upon her.

But she knew as well as Axel that there was no way around this.

"I've attached my Dreamstone as the fuel for Illumina, at no cost to myself, and opened the Lane Between with its laser cannons."

Ephemer appeared to crumple inwards on himself with relief.

"I don't even have the time to tell you how I've come to believe this, but you're running out of even more time than you believe."

It's not happening.

Hold on, Roxas.

Axel's coming.

I'm coming.

He'll make it.

I'll make it.

"I can't even spare much time with words, or that may interrupt the connection I've established with Illumina's engine.

"Suffice to say, you can be assured Lezard aspires to the same sin as Mare."

Axel sagged slightly.

Mare's claw around Xion tightened a little.

Then it relaxed.

But Xion remained totally present in reality, because she knew if that was all there was to it, Alicia wouldn't even be making the effort to talk to them.

"The danger he poses lies in Selphie's and Wakka's own prophecies."

Xion didn't understand why she still wanted to throw up.

Had she honestly believed they were exempt?

Mare lengthened her Neo Darkside arm as her Nightmare self touched down and slowed it, and then there was black rock beneath Xion's legs and they couldn't find purchase and Axel reached out his nearest arm and brought it around her shoulders to hold her up.

"This is all I'll risk saying."

The air before them rippled, and an ordinary sized Gummi ship appeared with the rough patterns of Radical Dreamer, Unstolen Jewel standing on the two bottom legs of its paopu shape with a clear cockpit extending from the center of the five limbs with a transparent floor roughly at its equator.

"Get aboard!

"Hurry!"

---

Sora couldn't separate from concepts and perception, because there wasn't any such thing as severance or bonds, and nor was there even just a was, of him or anything else.

All there was now was so much remotely aching fatigue everywhere he was too exhausted to even fall asleep.

"My friends. They are my power!"

Calling upon that power had turned Kairi and Riku into murderers of an innocent, defenseless little girl against both of their decisions.

At his own fingered hands.

Sora knew they now no longer grasped Childhood's Laughter or the Kye-Blade, but he couldn't remember whether he'd just dropped them or sent them away.

Sora was too tired to even want to sleep.

It didn't even matter now that Woody had woken him up.

Because he could just lie her and stop moving until he died now.

Not even preventing himself from having an afterlife mattered any longer.

It wasn't even worth the effort to prevent himself from having that.

Or being sent to one of endless torment.

Wherever he ended up when he died, he'd just lie or drift there forever.

"Just let it end, boy."

That was right.

That was what he should have done then.

Who cared if even Mickey and Riku were willing to take revenge on Xehanort?

That showing Xehanort forgiveness, and mercy, had been what had convinced him to give Sora the Kye-Blade, and kept the realm of light from cascading into ruin, couldn't possibly make any difference in a reality like this.

Distantly, somewhere Sora knew and that never should have meant anything to him, Vanitas' voice sounded.

"Now I get it," he said, not sounding at all strained by keeping Roxas in a pocket of preserved time he himself was separate from, perhaps because Christopher most likely hadn't been affected by it, his inflections filled with unusually revolted irritation at himself.

"Whatever the rest of the details are, however Maleficent found out it's not the Book of Prophecies Luxu has kept packed away for all these ages, that I missed this one is a comedy production you rarely get to laugh at.

"Completing the Note Blade requires Oathkeeper and Oblivion, the truest dream of light and the most apathetic chasm of darkness, to clash, with whichever wielder, or wielders, choose Dandelion fluff and refuses to duel the other getting an Oathkeeper, while anyone who gives into the darkness and goes on the attack gets an Oblivion, while there are three chasers so the third can balance the other two out if there's more than one Oblivion."

Even Vanitas' realization, as much sense as it made, didn't bother Sora now.

The concept of wielding a second Oathkeeper, and not just passing his own back and forth with Roxas, caused Sora's stomach to shift a bit sickly, but that was all.

"My original self wants Sora to be the one to smelt the Note Blade because the other two potential forgers are Roxas and Xion, but Sora threw the connections binding their hearts to both Keyblades at once off balance when he just took Oathkeeper from Roxas as opposed to shattering it after Roxas pulled a Ven out of his hat at Memory's Skyscraper, and Xion pulled a Ven out of her own scalp by refusing to get involved to avoid making the situation worse.

"While all the other components have been positioned to need to either mend or further sever their connections, a lot or a little.

"Either will do, just as long as Oathkeeper and Oblivion clash at least once, and the third essential chaser balances out any tipped scales, as needed."

There it finally was.

Christopher had been correct all along.

Maybe even the Xehanorts.

If Sora fought Roxas or Xion at all, he'd cast the Note Blade.

If he didn't, just as the Real Organization Thirteen had blackmailed him with Anna and Elsa and the New Seven Hearts, Roxas or Xion or both of them would do it.

Black did devour all colors.

The sole question left at the end of it all was whether the lesser darkness would be to let one of them do it, or do it himself.

"But you won't remain ignorant of the abyssal foundations of darkness for much longer.

"For you will confront your choice when you learn what the most devout believers in the darkness or light are willing to deceive innocent children into kindling, at what cost, and how Maleficent intends to harness this to cast her New World upon the totality of the stellar tapestry; and the torment a Station of Awakening can condemn its victims to if it sends them into the past."

That, and whatever this torment was.

Whatever difference even that could make after what Sora had just let Christopher play him into compelling Kairi and Riku to do out of his puffy starry eyed unshakeable trust in the light of love and oaths.

After what he'd just done.

After the promise to Kairi he'd just broken.

When he'd already inexorably coerced not just Kairi, but Anna and all of the other Princesses but Elsa, into needing to murder another innocent themselves a second time, or die.

When he was the Kye-Blade.

"It's too bad for you I have too much of a bone to pick with Maleficent, and her increasingly tiresome assertion that darkness is a dish better served cold than hot inures her to its pitfalls even after all the evidence people from Xehanort's Heartless to me have shown her prove otherwise by now, to let that happen with you in a position to swoop in like the carrion you are and peck up the prize for yourself.

"Even if I can't stop my original self from getting it, you aren't snatching it up.

"Unless you're willing to tell me all the remaining details I haven't pieced together about the insoluble venture in war profiteering you also rans have been stuffing your grubby fingers into since Mare and I tossed you out of Namine's datascape, so I know specifically how to keep you away from the Note Blade, I highly advise you to make like the vultures you are and flap your pompousness somewhere without a Keyblade, for once."

"All I have to say in response to that is that I'm actually glad Xehanort didn't just recite his lines, and Xion didn't team up with Roxas at Memory's Skyscraper to weaken Sora enough for Xemnas and Xehanort's Heartless to fulfill their true roles in the contingency we didn't want to succeed."

Sora's stomach just shifted slightly.

"The sooner I capture all of Strelitzia's thirteen Darknesses, the sooner Maleficent will learn the secrets from the actual Book of Prophecies you all know."

"I was the one who told her I know what's in the Book, but seeing as you're about to lose the feet you're stomping, I could care less."

Vanitas positioned Void Gear in an offensive stance, and then he charged into the dome of separated time.

Within seconds, Sora could hear the sounds of combat, and Keyblades connecting.

His stomach heaved at the knowledge Vanitas was now combating a child.

But he hadn't stopped Anna from fighting him.

Why did he care about this now?

Or about how Vanitas, even with the ability to bring forth who knew how many Unversed as backup, was almost certainly at a very steep disadvantage when confronting a Keyblade wielder such as Christopher now that the materialized Station of Awakening could channel Luxu's adeptness and experience, and Vanitas had very likely had committed to a face off he had little chance of emerging victorious in.

"The second Roxas touches a single one of the snow drifts around the disconnected space, the head curse will activate," Elsa said from somewhere out of the way.

"I'd anticipated this possibility, and if you can keep anyone else from interfering, I have this well in hand."

Sora's stomach flipped a little at that one.

But why did he even care about that?

"My friends. They are my power!"

The power to hurt.

"Unless I say otherwise, all I am with any of this is a friend who still loves you very much, and I always will," Anna's voice said as a pair of legs walked around him until they were in front of his hair on the side he could see.

Then warm and securely reassuring arms were lifting him and placing his head in her lap, her arms were back around him, secure and sheltering and protecting and near and tight, and the rest of her body folded over him, offering him the same warmth he had her during the last voyage through the ocean of stars where he'd believed there were any real dreams of a hearth and laughter worth chasing and holding on to.

He was too tired to even want to close his eyes, but he did so before having them pressed into Anna's shirt could irritate them.

Yet, beyond all encompassment of any comprehension, Sora found his body was even now able to relax a little into the sanctuary of the warmth of the most loving and caring person he'd met in his life, and everything else was still kept away within it.

And he didn't even need to make any effort to keep himself from relaxing any more than he would if this wasn't just the most loving friend he'd met in his life.

Why?

Even though this was Anna?

He'd forced Kairi and Riku to murder a little girl.

He'd done so himself?

How could he even still have black glass sand?

"Even after this, I can still tell you, with entire honesty, it can be okay."

He was just so very, very exhausted of it all.

But Anna's voice, sure and soothing, and the assuring strokes of the arm and hand that was circling in arcs on his back, was so lulling he wanted to sleep now, even if he never wanted to wake up.

For the first time, he was aware there were still tears in eyes whose such ingrained knowledge how to cry was one of the most drawn mockeries of the cosmic weapon of mass destruction and serial genocidal mass murderer that he should have learned he was first of all when he'd become an old enough child to understand reality.

"First of all, in regards to me, you don't have to worry about preventing me from gaining all the happiness I'm sure you now see yourself as at least as at fault for stealing from me as Elsa.

"As soon as I see him again, even if you or Kairi break it off again, I'll choose Kristoff."

Sora suppressed the urge to emit a keening wail of relief.

However, a wrenching distortion of loss contorted through him right afterwards.

All he was aware of was terror.

No.

He hadn't betrayed anything, and he wasn't even crying more, or harder, at this.

Then he didn't need to fear responding, or letting the agony that caused all of his insides to warp at the memory Anna had spent most of her life alone into his voice.

Sora's voice now was a thin, keening wail, broken and spent and wasted and begging.

"But… but you've spent almost all of your life alone and you told me Kristoff didn't believe in you and that also means Kristoff didn't believe you could be together with Elsa again and you should be laughing and grinning all the time but you've known little else than hurt and torment for most of your life so how can I believe that and it's more than that now I found out before coming here that I'm a danger to you and with the exception of Elsa due to her abilities all of the Princesses why didn't I know how could I not have paid just a little more attention why didn't I ask why whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy"

"There is no reason or rhyme to it," Christopher interjected with faked and overdone cheer from within the dome of night. "Because this is a World where the Gods that created it constructed Kingdom Hearts as a laboratory sample in an effective petri dish with drugs, for the purpose of creating weapons of war, among them the most inhumane conceivable."

Sora started a little to realize his awareness had actually not just removed reality, but drowned it out, for a minority of seconds.

Anna folded closer and more sure and reassuring and soothing and securely around him, the arm and hand stroking his back in circles became a little gentler and firmer, and her arm around his back pulled him tighter and nearer.

"Seeing as you're talking with the same fabricated optimism too many people to number do, the same type the typical self absorbed coward hiding in a comfortable insulated bubble who believes plastering on a giant fraudulent smile and pretending adversity isn't around will cause all problems to magically go away, does as a matter of course, I'll take that as you being in denial, and thus scared of this one, for once, brat," Vanitas replied from out of sight with sarcastic contained derision.

Sora had plenty of firsthand experience standing up for his fellow students throughout his years of school when the other children or teenagers treated their hardship as nothing more than a barrel of laughs in similar ways, or related ones, not to know precisely what Vanitas was referring to with that one.

Or to be unable to remember how many times Riku and Sora had needed to break up fights between Tidus and Wakka and Selphie and other teenagers or children who treated their peers in similar ways, whether the tormentor was a boy or a girl, fights Riku himself initiated or participated in a small but sizeable number of times.

"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason.

"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."

"Not at all," Christopher responded in a mildly chiding voice, and Sora heard the precisely directed energies of a strike at Vanitas that told him he hadn't been bothered enough to let it affect his combat capabilities even a bit detrimentally.

"I'm no more than exceptionally tickled by how the World and cosmos are the product of war profiteers; hearts like Maleficent and Pete who, unlike even the Xehanorts, who merely saw the Second Keyblade War as no more than a means to an end, dreamed of the Second Keyblade War as the outcome itself."

Sora was barely aware of Anna's warmth.

This time, it didn't return until it was closer and more secure than before, or beforehand.

"It takes one to know one," Vanitas replied with dripping derisive sarcasm.

All of the sounds of combat weren't losing any coordination, telling Sora Vanitas, regardless of how much he was or wasn't even more angry with Christopher by now, was also keeping it from affecting him in combat.

"What you did, and what Christopher just said, still doesn't change how you don't need proof for dreams to be dreams," Anna spoke.

Sora wanted to wither into a husk that could still be devoid of absences at hearing Anna had now passed her own horizon of being able to keep back tears, even in the same frame of heart and mind she'd protected Elsa with.

His insides gave out.

Sora could barely breathe through his tears now, because his chest throbbed with thrusts of anguish after how much crying he'd done over the past week since he'd returned home to discover he'd never comprehended there was no home

"What good is dreaming in what you imagine if nothing can fountain from that as well you were alone most of your life and you didn't tell me I never knew I abandoned you I should have never left Arendelle I didn't come to see you myself after you brought Elsa home because I was afraid Elrena would hurt Elsa or you if I did I just let you suffer I'm so sorry I'm so very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very sorry and all I could do was keep falling down the mountain tumbling down and letting you break Icouldn'tholdorcarryanyofElsa'stearsoryoursIdidn'tgiveupbutitstillwasn'tenoughit'sneverenoughitwillneverbeenoughitcanneverbefaritcanneverberightnowitcanneverberighthereenoughnomatterhowlongorhowhardItrynothinggetsbetteritjustgetsworseIreallydidunderstandnothingallthistimethereisalightinanydarknessbutitsnotamatteroftherealwaysbeingthatlightbecausethatwarmthisjustthereflectionofaprojectorscreencastonanapatheticwallbyapicturethatisaphotonegativeofdarkness"

"Can you please stop worrying about me?" Anna responded, and if she was still crying a fragment herself, it was no longer in her words.

"I'm not the one at stake here, so you have no reason to keep feeling guilty.

"You are, and Kristoff is."

So Anna alone was the sole person in all the Worlds who believed she should be denied as much joy and laughter as she could clasp warm inside her heart?

When she'd spent most of her life living through nothing but lonely torment?

Without even animals for friends, as Ariel and Rapunzel had?

"But if the light of friendship is a form of power… the darkness of being alone is a power… even greater."

She'd been truly entirely alone, in pitch sooty ashen night, for years.

"But no light can be present without casting shadows, as you've said this many times.

"Even if you were available, and I did choose you, I'd feel bad because I abandoned Kristoff.

"You didn't take Kristoff from me.

"You gave him to me, as you gave me Elsa.

"Perhaps there really is no purpose or rhyme to it.

"But by not giving up, you were still able to be right out there for me when I needed you, calling my name and giving me the additional strength I needed to make it easier for me to reach Elsa in time, and then you beat Hans and enabled me to come home to Elsa and Kristoff."

"By recompleting Hans?"

It was the only thing Sora could think to say.

"By caring more about what we needed than what you didn't understand.

"You made the same mistake as I did with Elsa with Roxas, but that didn't stop you then, did it?"

Sora attempted to laugh with ruined bitterness.

But his chest spasmed, and he couldn't.

"Look how that one turned out.

"If all else fails, I may need to forge the Note Blade just to keep him from dirtying his hands even more by doing it himself."

"There was no time limit on that one.

"That, at least, is something you don't need to cry over."

Then Anna sagged a small bit around him and below him and above him, and her hold and circles became gentler and more assuring in their reassurance.

She must have just realized something she believed might make at least a little of the kind of difference Sora had flightily trusted he could with Young Xehanort.

To Sora's surprise, his breath hitched slightly.

Whatever it was, since Anna had thought of it, he realized he at least wanted to hear it.

"Look at your own light closely, Sora."

Sora's insides contorted into concaves at hearing the tears back in her voice, even though there was broken desperate joy in them now.

What light?

If it was to be found anywhere, it wasn't within him.

"As we've discussed, I could have reached Hans myself.

"But if you hadn't given me the confidence to do so with additional strength, he most likely wouldn't have been thrown back quite as far when the curse completed wrapping me in ice."

There was nothing for the sanctuary of Anna's love and warmth to keep away, because all there was was that secure warmth.

"If you'd given up after falling down the mountain three times, I would have protected Elsa from Hans' first strike, but I wouldn't have thrown him back far enough he didn't pull us into the darkness when he became a Heartless, and Elsa and I would have then both died when he pressed the attack."

"My friends… are my power!"

He'd refused to give up in the Keyblade Graveyard, though, and all that had done was wreck Kairi and Riku, while hurting Roxas, through forcing him to relive his nightmare at the hands of a sage who hated darkness, past any apprehension of a comparison more than he'd been hurt before.

"Following our heart's guidance and staying true to who we really are means that the darkness will forever lead us astray."

So how did this make that much difference, if any at all?

Maybe everything we've done… Maybe it was all for nothing. What am I supposed to do if I can't use the Keyblade!?

"Imbeciles! You can't be trusted to do anything!"

Maleficent, and her darkness, had protected them then.

Just do it.

Forge the Note Blade, and then lie down somewhere and stay there until you die.

It will be easier for the rest of the pieces to be positioned for Synchronicity Perceptual if you're the one who smelts it, but you've already completed two other Keyblades denizens of the darkness wanted, and won those wars even though you willingly lost those battles.

What's a third time?

Because the other two times, Sora hadn't needed to give in to the darkness to do it.

Nor had anyone been in as much peril as Anna and Elsa were if he did.

A peril that could be just over the horizon.

Which meant attempting to think of a way to cast the Note Blade with light, as he briefly had the Keyblade of Hearts, also wasn't an option.

As though Anna could tell what he was feeling and thinking even while it was still flowing through his heart and mind, she was going on, responding to his sentiments and thoughts without him even giving voice to them.

"Mickey told me you needed to alter time and space itself when you didn't give up in the Keyblade Graveyard."

"I don't need a weapon. My friends are my power!"

"Why, you're the key that connects everything."

"So it's all my fault."

He'd corroded Kairi and Riku into the most lethal weapons of all.

"With Hans, you protected me, and Elsa, too, just by loving the two of us without thinking twice with all your heart.

"If all you are is the sword of the Kye-Blade, would you really have been able to do that through no method other than crying in my place when we were there, right at each other's side, and so soon after we first met?

"You brought us back to each other.

"If you could give me back Elsa just by being the radiant jewel you are, and enable me to bring Elsa home, by being no one other than yourself, little to nothing could be more distant from a killer than you."

"Do you know what the simply complex reason for that is?

"It's because understanding the pain that gives us valid reasons to kill, or hurt, others also means understanding more about what the pain is that we want to inflict upon others, or let others be hurt by; so that pain thus hurts us more."

"Just by being yourself, you enable people, and their hearts, to receive or fulfill their dreams.

"Can you please believe that yourself?"

"Take it from me, it's not enough to wait for someone you care about. It's true that hearts are connected wherever you are. If it's impossible to be together, then all you can do is wait. But, if it is possible to be together, then that's how it should be."

"Sora…"

"You know, this really is a beautiful place. But you'd enjoy it so much more with someone you care about. Before, when I was looking around with Kairi, I remembered how important it is… to share moments with friends."

He should have learned better by now.

He couldn't believe it any longer.

Not after what he'd just done to Kairi, and Riku, and Boo.

So how, how, how, how, how, how, howhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhow could he still want to, with more desperation than he'd believed the idea could encompass?

The dead couldn't share joy and laughter with anyone.

"I don't even need to understand anything else about light or darkness to know that, even if you're all there is to light, you alone give it all the shades of illumination it needs to shine brighter than the most resplendent super nova."

"What was that?"

"His eyes couldn't lie."

"Lie? And just who were you trying to fool? Huh? Huhhh?"

"Myself."

"Riku… C'mon, man! Why did you try to do so much on your own? You got friends… like us!"

"Have you forgotten? I'll tell you why. 'Cause I'm not a total sap like you."

"Say that again!"

But Riku wouldn't let himself feel, or be, much of anything at all now.

He hadn't returned to fearing the darkness, but he feared himself so much more he might as well have just been hiding under the bed from bumps in the night then.

"I had given in to the darkness. How'm I gonna' face everyone?"

"Like this!"

"Having you for a friend."

"Then I guess… I'm okay the way I am."

Because he'd forced both Kairi and Riku to imitate his murder of a helpless little girl who just wanted to laugh and cuddle up to Sulley and Mike with hugs?

Because he was so deadly he could murder her, and force Kairi and Riku to do it, from light years away?

No one had a sanctuary from him anywhere.

"There's your simple and clean sanctuary.

"Don't spare too much thought to what you just did.

"Whether the light is a torch or a candle that incinerates moths to ash, whether it drifts in the deepest darkness or black devours it, it's still there.

"Go to Kairi.

"And Riku, if they're together.

"Without giving into the darkness.

"You can still protect them, one more time, and bring all of us home, while running through the light with your love and laughter echoing between each other, and one another, under the cerulean ocean of the sky and the scintillating stars.

"If the light has no rhyme in this World, if you don't lose your trust in it, and in the warmth of love, then, with all my heart, I believe that you can still be an incandescent beacon to give it purpose yourself.

"I understand that you can no longer see why I'm holding on so tight to that belief about you because your vision of the cosmos and history is now obscured by your tears.

"But if you didn't believe in your dreams of a reality of warm love, a secure hearth, bubbling grins, and verdant laughter as incomprehensibly as you do, you wouldn't be able to cry when other people are cast away from it into the darkness."

"Carrying around a little hurt can't be all that bad. Hurting is part of caring."

Sora had no breath the hot, sharp tears against the backs of his eyelids could constrict off now.

"You have to have a heart to cry."

Although he couldn't draw closer to people in pain, if he couldn't shed tears, he wouldn't understand hurt in the first place.

But that couldn't be true af–

No.

Tears were water, not ice.

He was not going to give up.

And he'd save any more tears for when he'd done what Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Anna needed him to.

Sora felt the surface beneath the portions of his body Anna wasn't engulfing change into hard stone, and Anna shifted slightly beneath him, and he knew Doors to Light had moved him, Kairi, Riku, Roxas, Anna, and this time Elsa, to the location of the Note Blade he must have registered through the connections woven around it.

Kairi first.

Riku if necessary.

Then the hard part.

Because Sora knew what would happen if no one did cast the Note Blade now.

It would be contingency after contingency, flashpoint after flashpoint, all over once again, for another over eleven years or even longer, and perhaps even one or more other Keyblade Wars.

This was perhaps the penultimate test of Goofy's plan.

The sole way to keep that from happening was to hold on tight to the light of the past, not to repeat its mistakes, but to draw vitality from its efforts as he had at the Keyblade Graveyard.

This time, he needed to smelt a Keyblade with light that wouldn't disintegrate as soon as he completed it, so the Foretellers were in less of a position to seize it for themselves, and then lock it away with the Kye-Blade somewhere no one else knew of, or could reach.

The concept of wielding one Oathkeeper, while one or more other person wielded a second, and very potentially even a third, caused his stomach to heave with jolts of anguish that were a little painful.

However, there really was no way to dodge this one.

In a fluidly sure motion, Sora brought his hands and arms down to stone that felt like the underside of a bridge, and then he stood.

Childhood's Laughter and the Kye-Blade were at his side on the surface of what appeared to be the underside of a bridge, and Sora grasped them and rose.

As he registered the situation before him, he turned his peripheral perception to tracing his connection to Xion, the other Keyblade wielder who had cast a Keyblade of Hearts.

---

Riku's face became empty of any features.

Mickey flipped forward and to his left to position himself in front of Riku, between the prone Keyblade wielder and the rest of them as best as he could.

Kairi whirled in Riku's direction.

Her lungs halted their motion, and her body refused to move.

Then it was there, the one memory she had been able to keep out of her sentiment and self since shortly after Sora had vanished from right beneath her hand seeking to hold him to his home and her heart, hanging preserved once more before her transparently carved opaquely into the roots of what defined her and her existing anything and clearing away every self before it like chaff cast about by the most ferocious gamma ray burst.

"You're the fire that feeds Sora's anger."

"No… Sora's in danger because of me…"

The hold on her body and lungs and limbs vanished, and Kairi could move freely.

Riku's face was now calm and accepting.

"This way!"

"Who–?"

"Believe in yourself. C'mon, hurry!"

eagerly plunging headlong through another door seeking cheap whimsical thrills and scampering through the washing tides splashing Sora and Riku with water and blowing it out of her mouth to squirt them

all she wanted was for these days to last forever

but she should never have gained them to begin with

everything she was and knew was founded on torment and death and betrayal and sadness and abandonment and castaways

there was no other way to set things right

no other way to ensure Sora and Riku at last hated her as they should have the instant they'd first heard about her inexplicable appearance on Destiny Islands

there was no her to believe in

everything she'd been had been the most slapdash fabrication of any world and heart

Kairi's hands tensed in preparation to deliver the blow.

White was around Riku and her that she should be able to identify, but there was no time to pay it any heed.

She reached into her heart, this time for only its tapestry of darkness.

"Now, Ava!" Skuld's Heartless screamed.

Dizziness left Kairi light, and gasping for breath as she staggered.

Before she could steady her posture, crystal spires the shape of the ones she'd become when Dad had murdered her with the color of coal manifested around Destiny's Embrace, and her hand swung down at Riku's chest without her decision to move it.

Sora was right in front of her, Childhood's Laughter sliding towards beneath where its arc would take it to intercept the cut.

Then Skuld's Heartless cannoned herself over the curve of Destiny's Embrace like a cannonball, hurling her body onto Childhood's Laughter and arresting its motion as she pushed Sora back.

Horror morphed everything into crystalline clarity.

Kairi attempted to arrest her momentum, but it was too late.

Destiny's Embrace struck Riku in the chest, sliding into his skin as though it were tissue paper.

His body became white gem fragments and cracked into splinters that vanished into the air.

---

Sora pulled Childhood's Laughter free of the woman with dark brown hair and slid to her side.

His insides were so thin and drawn he was sure he was going to retch violently and then drown in his food before it left his mouth, but he forced all emotions away and sprinted to Kairi's side, sending Childhood's Laughter away in coils of light and sliding his fingers through hers and his hand around hers and squeezing it as reassuringly and supportively as he could think of.

But the sole way Kairi reacted was for her face to shift a little.

And she might as well have had no awareness at all he was clasping her hand.

Sora's heart clenched so tightly at Kairi's lack of reaction, that it itself should have retched violently.

But, he still ached everywhere within and upon his existing self with exhaustion so unboundedly beyond any comprehension of encompassment he had no energy at all for that.

Anything that couldn't separate or merge lacks and delineations just wanted to collapse crumpled boneless into the sanctuary of Kairi's arms that he belonged in neverforfaroff defying apprehension the least of all now, where he still against all expression wanted nothing more than to remain there, this time with his eyes closed, without the most singularity thin motion until he died, hopefully under those conditions as his whole end.

He didn't know whether he felt relieved or terrified that Kairi's Mom hadn't accompanied them.

Just Gula, standing well past Kairi.

Ovular purples and blacks burst from the floor that was the underside of a bridge, and Riku staggered unsteadily out of it, his current age but wearing his Dream Eater garb.

Sora's heart squeezed like it had turned into a thin and frayed rope at the knowledge that Riku was once more a disembodied Dream Eater who couldn't travel the realm of light freely without a Keyblade wielder to latch onto.

The corners of Riku's lips curled up slightly at seeing him, but otherwise, he didn't react much himself.

"Kairi, Riku, pull yourselves together!" Anna shouted from the other side of the black treasure chest with crimson heart sigils engraved on it, standing to Elsa's left and slightly behind her.

"This isn't the time!"

"Seeing as the catch for what just happened isn't apparent yet, I'm not so sure about that," Riku disagreed, his words composed.

A boy with short silver hair and a long red scarf who Sora had only seen once before, the last time he'd faced odds even close to this while refusing to give up, flipped out of a Doubleflight from the clock gears just below them.

Sora risked a glance down to see that Xion, Lea, Isa, and Mare were standing on a walkway leading up to the back of the clock face opposite them itself, looking up in their direction with varying expressions of worry, Lea and Isa paying more attention than the other two to the mysterious woman.

Xion was favoring both of her arms and wrists in a way he didn't care to see.

"Ava, what did you just do?" he breathed in a wisp of horrified agonized terror.

"I'm so very sorry, Ephemer, Skuld," a voice that wasn't Kairi's own emitted from her body with resigned and contained sadness Sora's essence seared at him to attempt to fathom and catch the tears of, even though he knew attempting to carry Ava's pain would very possibly be too much more than he could catch at this time.

"I wasn't going to take the chance Kairi would give in."

Reality was at once there and gone and too jagged clangorous sharp at the recognition of what Ava had said about Kairi.

Kairi had almost genuinely given in to the darkness, and turned Riku back into a disembodied Dream Eater, and he'd almost given up on his ability to keep her out of it and just abandoned her to cascade into the night.

No.

As long as he could cry, he still had a heart.

Then a phantasm of a girl around her age clad in a white fox mask and partially pink robes stepped out from Kairi.

"Even Luxu didn't realize."

Ava's voice remained unchanged.

"Master Yozora has even been using him."

Gula started violently and then stiffened.

Ephemer frowned with depth surpassing, cutting pain.

The woman clenched her teeth incredibly tightly.

Sora's stomach tumbled over itself with sickness at the confirmation of this fear.

"But the last pieces fell into place as soon as you told me Strelitzia wasn't destined to reclaim her darkness as a vessel and not as parts of her self, and I finally figured out what Empyreal's real role is, and why he's the one who got the Nightmare Chirithy."

Sora pushed away a rush of unease at the reminder Yozora's Heartless had fallen back against the railing behind Kairi and Riku as soon as they'd appeared out of five Doors to Light, his eyes closed in apparent unconsciousness.

"Master Yozora wants to reorganize the cosmos and channel it into Roxas' Kingdom Hearts"

Sora swept all of his new horror and terror at this revelation beyond far off to the side

"so the minority hearts who haven't been lost to the darkness that will flood the World, Gaes, and the void outside it as he reconstructs it, can live in the New World of Synchronicity Perceptual.

"But he wants the rest of them to remain discarded in the reorganized cosmos, partially as a virtually endless supply of sacrificial cattle to keep Strelitzia's remaining five Darknesses and Vanitas infecting the ruins of the ordinary space time continuities.

"And partially because he sees Domain of Tales as just as much of an anathema as them, and he wants Him dead at Empyreal's hands, and we both know there's only one way to end the life of Domain of Tales."

Ephemer staggered back as though he'd been violently struck.

The face of the Heartless of the woman named Skuld became drawn with the terrified horror of a hanging jaw and wide eyes.

After what Sora had just done to Kairi and Riku and Boo, though, he could scarcely believe, whatever was filling Ephemer and Skuld's Heartless with this much anguish, his stomach was churning a little without him knowing what it was.

Ava's hands, and arms, reached in both of their directions.

But then she pulled them back.

When she spoke the following time, it was lifeless of even death.

"I needed to take this chance to see if one pebble could nudge the entire current a second time, so I agreed to the request of Skuld's Heartless to assist her in becoming the dark component of the Note Blade while I'm in a position to make that possible difference.

"And this way, Kairi didn't give in, while the cost was merely the assembly of the six components through Namine's ties to all of them, and herself."

Sora kept his gaze from shifting in the direction of the motionless ice sculpture of Roxas, where he stood far behind Elsa as himself once more after she must have moved one of the snow mounds to touch him as soon as the Door to Light had manifested; and, based on how no one below was looking at him, out of sight of Xion, Lea, Mare, and Isa.

When would Christopher attempt his mugging?

What did Young Xehanort's remaining prophecy refer to?

Were Anna and Elsa at any more severe risk than usual yet, from theirs?

And how could he cast the Note Blade with light, and then lock it somewhere to keep it out of anyone's hands, so they could thus avoid the Foretellers endeavoring to bring about a cascade chain of contingencies as the Xehanorts had?

Ava took a single backwards stride, and then dimmed away as she flowed back into Kairi.

Gula crossed his arms over his chest, and he tapped his left foot on the stones with mock impatience.

"Now then, who is going to pick up the last tongs for the Note Blade?" he queried with slight pointedness and composure.

"We've waited for well over eleven thousand, six hundred eighty years for this, so let's wrap up this rehearsal and get the performance moving."

That Sora had a very precise time span was irrelevant now.

One last time

don't think twice

with all your heart

reach

Sora traced his connections to Xion, drawing sharper concentration on them from the warmth of Kairi's hand in his.

This time, there was also time to trace the connections back along his chain of memories to how he'd spoken to Roxas when his Nobody was in his heart.

Anguish tore out of his wrists, telling him he was very likely feeling them broken above Xion's hands.

Sora's stomach vaulted another time.

What other tears had he lost his chance to catch, in order to strain hopelessly to fulfill a vow to Kairi he'd broken?

Had this happened due to Ven's death by her hands?

Or during the events surrounding it?

But this meant he may have succeeded, so he created words in his mind's eye, sealing all traces of his knowledge she'd murdered Ven out of his heart's and mind's ability to imbibe, and he sent those words to Xion.

Can you hear me?

Xion started slightly.

Sora's legs were rubber.

You can do this.

Captain Hook's plank.

Your arrival at Radiant Garden.

Xehanort's Heartless' World of Chaos.

Goofy's head injury.

Scar's ghosts.

The real Castle That Never Was.

The sleeping Tron reaching his hand for you as Rinzler.

The Sleeping World That Never Was.

Kairi's second Demon Tide.

Riku's and Mickey's fragments of Kairi's heart.

Your first confrontation with Christopher.

All he registered was Jiminy's absence.

I'm sharing this time with Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Anna, in the simply clean here and now.

It's working.

I am stronger than this.

I do believe this.

There was a mixture of relief and a much too channeled, desperate determination in Xion's mental voice when it rang back.

Donald and Goofy are holding off two of the Foretellers.

The rubber faded.

Then Sora had even less to worry about.

Do you know how Roxas is?

With Xion, in particular, Sora couldn't be evasive.

Elsa's running interference, as considerately and with as little authority as possible, but he's on the verge of giving into the darkness, or across that line, but in his human form.

Xion jolted violently.

She was too far away for Sora to see any of the specifics of her eyes, facial expressions, and body language, though.

Molten anguish flooded through all of Sora as he realized he couldn't perceive any of Xion's emotions, or thoughts, as he'd been able to with Roxas in the Sleeping World That Never Was.

Sora didn't let any of his awareness of what she'd done to Ven into his perspective, though, because he knew this was no guarantee Xion couldn't feel anything he was experiencing.

That's one of the reasons I need your help.

We both know what will happen if the Note Blade isn't forged now, so I want to do it with light, and you and I and Roxas are supposed to meld its last components together through a clash between Oathkeeper and Oblivion, with the third participant balancing out any scales he or she needs to if there's more than one Oblivion.

Sora forced down his misgivings at how Xion might or might not already know about his ties to the Kye-Blade.

How could he be so selfish he was worried about that now?

With the stakes this dire?

With perhaps the very memory of Anna in terrible danger?

I want to do it with one or two Oathkeepers, three if we can't keep Roxas out of it, and then lock the Note Blade somewhere no one but I can find with the Kye-Blade.

Xion didn't react visibly in any way Sora could see.

Sora wished he could reach into his chest, grip his heart with his hands, and tear it out.

You smelted a partial Keyblade of Hearts, which I once touched off with light like with what I want to do with the Note Blade now.

Do you have any ideas how to do it, based on your experiences?

So fast that it was blindingly obvious, even from this distance, Xion was being extremely reckless, she raised her arms to him, holding them in such a way it was obvious her wrists were broken.

I'll call Oathkeeper, and if you time a Cure with your own before it drops out of my fingers, the magic will cause my breaks to heal incorrectly, and that will qualify as a clash of light and light that could work.

Sora pushed all emotion as far away as possible, drawing upon the warmth of Kairi's hand in his to call up the same steadiness and calm he'd known when he'd convinced the other wielders to leave Xehanort to him, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy, and restrain Kingdom Hearts.

Sora filled his mental voice with as much reassuring trust and confidence in Xion as he could.

At least he knew he was steady enough to keep all traces of his knowledge she'd killed Ven out of his voice, as well.

You're more than capable of coming up with a better idea.

That's unneeded self sacrifice, and that will qualify as the kind of darkness the Foretellers need to take the Note Blade for their own with ease.

Sora suppressed the urge to recoil violently from the undiluted and keening, practically unrestrained desperate parched desolate wasteland of hate and fury for herself in her voice, with the flayed strips not aimed at herself directed almost madly and chaotically out in any direction.

I need to live for Roxas and Axel and Mare and Elsa!

And we're attempting to destroy the original Gazing Eye, sealed behind the clock gear right before my eyes.

Sora let himself start violently at that revelation.

Ephemer didn't take the time to tell us how to do it, or to make it easier with the Keyblade of Hearts, and the sooner I figure out how to open the lock, the better my chances of succeeding, and atoning for all my sins.

If I can do this, I'll take away the Foretellers' ability to yank our strings by shattering their faith in the Book of Prophecies they've depended on as a crutch to write our lines, and the scenes of all the worlds of all of the realm of light, for so many eons!

Kairi.

Kairi's hand was in his.

There and revitalizing and holding him on his legs and keeping him on his feet and assuring and refreshing and with him and certain.

He hadn't passed out from relief.

There was the bright light.

With Kairi right there with him at his side, the luminescent kaleidoscope she always was, calling him back to the warmth of home from the everlasting lost cold of the night and keeping him held close to the warmth of her love and the hearth of her heart.

But if you won't do it, then you can defend yourself with your Oathkeeper from a Strike Raid I throw through my wrists at you from my teeth!

Spirals of silver and ivory manifested before Xion's face.

---

There was no time to do anything but feel and know with all his heart, and talk and act without thinking twice.

It was that simple, and that clean, a sanctuary.

And the answer was transparently emblazoned upon sentiment and self, nonexistence and real.

Sora carefully but swiftly extricated his hand from Kairi's, refusing to let her be a part of this.

Childhood's Laughter broke apart in coils of silver and pearl, reconnecting into the promise of Oathkeeper.

Oathkeeper was twirling at him through the air from Xion's mouth as though it were a careening child's top.

Elsa sprinted toward Sora, her right hand outstretched as Anna's once had a little over a year and a month of untold aeons ago, a thin sheen of ice solidifying before her, Arendelle's rightful heir and Queen clearly having discerned what Xion intended, and why, but unsure if just blocking the Strike Raid with ice herself would prevent the Foretellers from acquiring the Note Blade.

Oblate night erupted behind Xion, and Christopher took a single step out of it, Fractured Night's tip pointed at Xion, and a clock the height and width of a human appeared above her, its three hands gyrating backwards almost too swiftly for Sora's eyes to track.

A giant armored phantom Sora had glimpsed when he'd seen the memories of Xion volcano out of his heart as the dangling sketches of frozen wavelengths flickered rapidly over Xion, and the same obsidian minarets of crystal that had adumbrated Kairi's Keyblade coruscated about Xion's Oathkeeper.

Anna's legs bent, and she barreled after Elsa, the determined cast to her visage not tempered by the doubt and terror about the choice Sora knew she was frightened past innumerable measurement more she might or might not need to make within seconds.

Elsa did nothing but pour additional layers of ice into the shield, lengthening and widening it and thickening it as much as she could without it slowing her down, and sped up, extending her hand into a nearly exact mirror of the position Anna's had been in during those hope constricting and despair drowning instants.

Sora directed the tip of the Kye-Blade at the onyx treasure chest, to lock the chest as soon as the Note Blade was smelted, thus keeping it out of the Foretellers' possession in plain sight where they might least anticipate him concealing it from them, as the guardians of light would have much less need of Goofy's plan with the Gazing Eye fragmented, and.

Then he reversed Oathkeeper, aiming its apex at his chest, and threaded his connections into a tapestry that would shatter his heart, put it to sleep, and send it into Xion's, a warm embrace meant to confront her hatred and despair with love, rather than aggression.

Before he could, though, Sora heard the minute hand and the hour hand of the other side of the clock face click into the nine o' clock, and three o' clock, positions, respectively, and the second hand tick into the twenty-eighth like the drop of a tear below a blinking eye.

Cold shock and terrified horror consumed all of Sora as he realized the solution to the riddle of how to unlock the door to the Gazing Eye, and destroy it, while he knew indelibly in all of his self there was no time to warn anyone else, even if he summoned up every single fiber of acceleration he knew how to muster up as a Keyblade wielder to speed up the rate at which he could feel, think, react, and move.

Master Yozora's visions of the future are blinded by his tears.

Sora could perceive a pulsating darkness behind the center of the clock face, so grasping it sought to funnel any hearts and all everys into it.

Not without opening his heart to the Kye-Blade enough that, in his current state, there was a very good chance the realm of light would follow the black chest into prison.

Perhaps, if Sora had passed the Mark of Mastery Exam he'd twice failed, he would have been able to do it.

However, right here, right now, in this single distilled mote of real and fiction, time and space, all other roads but the one etched before him had left him forsaken.

He always had been, always wouldn't be, and ineluctably was too much of a washout to smelt the Note Blade with light, lock it away, and destroy the Gazing Eye at the same time.

He could do it if he pushed Elsa out of the way.

And that wouldn't be a strike at Xion.

Though, while pushing Elsa out of the way wasn't showing aggression to Xion, it wouldn't blanket hers enough in light to keep the Note Blade out of Yozora's, and the Foretellers', hands.

Anna altered her direction as she passed in front of him with the baseline heightened rapidity of a novice gunblade wielder, reaching out her left hand with her fingers extended as far as they could to wind around the Kye-Blade, the sole Keyblade she could touch without losing hold of it if it fell too far out of Sora's grip, unshakeable determined set resolve in her expression.

She used the grip to arrest her movement, and whirl her sprint into a skid that became a turn.

Then her right hand, palm open as it had been when it had intercepted Hans' sword, shot in the direction of Oathkeeper, to push it gently to the side where Sora could toss it at the nexus of the back of the clock piece.

Elsa jolted with the similar baseline acceleration of an enchantress new to the lessons of how to improve her own reflexes to cast spells, clearly having heard what Anna had just done.

Sora could barely see anything through his own tears.

All he needed to do was stand down from any form of combat at all, and accept Anna's true love as a friend, and that should be enough light.

He let Anna push his arm to the side.

Strike Raid sent Oathkeeper whirling at the clock face.

Gula, grunting in an amalgamation of shock and genuine dismay, vaulted into the air, his own Keyblade, hanging in the air beside him, soaring out in a Strike Raid at a blazing pace that would take it in front of Oathkeeper's and shield the Gazing Eye.

Then Ephemer was in front of it, a single phantasm of globular light in front of him.

It met Gula's Keyblade.

The Oathkeeper met the central rear of the clock face at the same time as the tip of Elsa's whip wrapped around one of the pinnacles of crystal armoring Xion's Oathkeeper, and yanked it down and to the side.

A volcanic rainbow of all the shades of light Sora could imagine or recollect fountained out of the chest of purest night, star fury that washed out to paint reality and its phantasms.

Almost simultaneously, a pillar of pitch black ascended out from behind the now cracked core of the back of the clock piece.

Anything that existed shifted to the side of its presence and down, as though a lock had clicked tightly tight, and Sora found himself tumbling end over end towards a tall opal door that had appeared before him, similar doors in front of everyone else who had been tossed away.

Everyone but Anna, who had been hurled through the air in the direction of Christopher's corridor of darkness, still yawning wide, due to where she'd been located partially behind the Kye-Blade.

---

"I'm in one piece!" she screamed.

"The Kye-Blade told me!

"If you feel beholden to atone for your crimes, find the lawyer named Robert, and stand trial with him as your prosecutor!"

Then she plunged into the corridor of darkness, and had vanished somewhere Maleficent and Christopher very likely couldn't discern.

Kairi positioned herself in front of him.

She caught him in her arms against her body, within warmth engulfing and driving the aching tears away, as he cascaded into ebony and ivory.

.

BOOK FIVE: THE ETCHED JUNCTURE

.

Fin

.

Begin

.

BOOK SIX: THE WEFT AND WARP OF INTERCONNECTED CRYSTAL FRACTURES

.

"If the blade of light strikes down on those who are innocent, it will only lead to never ending tears and hatred."-Lacus Clyne

GUNDAM SEED:

Phase 47: THE NIGHTMARE REBORN